


Shade

by JazzRaft



Series: Dark at Night [33]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-10
Updated: 2018-09-10
Packaged: 2019-07-10 17:32:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15954161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JazzRaft/pseuds/JazzRaft
Summary: Nyx knew something was different about this ruin. He’d known the first day that Noctis had not returned, sweaty and exhausted but smiling in exasperated victory with some hoard of treasures spilling from his armiger to show off to the guys.In the edged glow of the campfire, amidst the twisting shadows of his friends rushing to meet Noct down the slope, Nyx could see that something was wrong.





	Shade

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted at [tumblr](http://jazzraft.tumblr.com/post/177873383027/i-was-wondering-if-youve-ever-played-through-the) for an anonymous request.

“I shouldn’t have let him go in alone!”

Nyx had been telling himself that for three days now, pacing up and down the rocks, eyes always on that corner of cut stone peering down at him from between the long-erupted refuse of Ravatogh.

It was stupid. It was reckless. He shouldn’t have let Noctis insist, shouldn’t have let him pull the “king” card and command him with a curl of his lips and an “I’ll be fine.”

They should have gone with him. They _could_ have. Whether the damn door was locked to those without royal blood or magic tethers to the Astrals’ ancient society or _whatever_ , Nyx didn’t care. He should have blasted the ruins open to let the rest of them pass if it meant not letting Noctis go in by himself. He should have grabbed the prince by the scruff and dragged him back through the bars before he descended into that quiet black pit of gods only knew what.

He should have taken charge. He should have been insubordinate. That was what he was best at, wasn’t it? All his disciplinary reports seemed to agree. The chain of command didn’t matter when it was Noct’s life on the line.

“He’s alright,” Ignis kept insisting.

There was no proof to the contrary that Nyx shouldn’t believe him. In all the time that Noctis wasn’t at their side – in front of them where Nyx could see, with his own eyes, that he was okay – his armiger was the evidence that, wherever he was, whatever he was doing in that alien box of a ruin, he was surviving.

But surviving wasn’t Nyx’s definition of _safe._ He could be alive, sure, but was he hurt? Was he scared?  The armiger couldn’t prove to him that Noctis wasn’t laying at the bottom of some blind bluff he hadn’t been able to see in the dark, body broken and crying out for help that no one would ever hear until his bones were found as far into the future as it took scholars of the old kings to find the ruin itself.

Maybe he was just being impatient. Maybe he had taken Noct’s joking too seriously – _“If I’m not back in three days, send the cavalry.”_ He’d never expected him to really be gone for that long. They’d ventured into plenty of ruins that barely took half of one day… but they’d always gone into them _together_. They didn’t do these things alone. It was suicide otherwise, plunging into the unknown without anyone there to watch your back.

Why _the hell_ did he let him go alone?

He was ready to go in on his own by the end of the third day. Whether or not the others chose to join him, Nyx didn’t really care. He’d already died once, he wasn’t afraid to do it again. They should have never let him go, their headstrong, impulsive, idiot prince. There could be nothing within that ruin that was worth a trial by solitude.

Fortunately, miraculously, when Nyx was at the frayed ends of his tether in his midnight marches through every possible worst case scenario, Noctis finally reemerged.

A shadow from the inky darkness of the night, as blackened and shambling as any daemon the Oracle wards were meant to scare off. Relief pierced through Nyx like a bullet, a thin pin of gratitude to whatever force had brought Noctis back to him; days of compounded fear sloughing off of his shoulders as the shadowy shape came more clearly into focus as his Noctis – the narrow cut of his shoulders, the stooped jut of one hip stiffened in his odd, familiar limp, the riot of artfully unkempt spikes of hair sharp against the fall of the campfire light.

Nyx warped to meet him, the choir of breathlessly excited “Nocts!” following the sparks left in his wake. Nyx bundled him up in a fierce hug before he could find his voice to say a word of relief at having him back in his arms. He squeezed him so tight before berating himself that he should have checked to make sure he wasn’t injured first. What if he hurt him worse than he already was by being so happy to see him?

“You’re just in time,” he said, pulling barely an inch away, enough to get a good look at him. “About to send the cavalry in.”

When Noctis smiled, Nyx knew he should have done just that.

In the edged glow of the campfire, amidst the twisting shadows of his friends rushing to meet them down the slope, Nyx could see that something was wrong.

Noct’s cheeks were smudged with ashen soot, his arms scraped and bruised. His shoulders fell heavy down his back, stooping his spine so his face met Nyx’s shoulder instead of his neck. When he pulled him closer to the fire, Nyx could see how black the undersides of his eyes were, how weak the smile was, how empty and pale the look in his gaze was.

His pupils dilated and he flinched against the firelight when he was barely close enough to feel its warmth. He tried to cover up his unease with the casual jabs at his friends’ concern when they caught up to the two of them, but he couldn’t conceal the way his skin blemished at the slightest brush of familiar contact, like he wasn’t used to feeling touch.

Nyx knew something was different about this ruin. He’d known the first day that Noctis hadn’t returned, sweaty and exhausted but smiling in exasperated victory with some hoard of treasures spilling from his armiger to show off to the guys.

Noctis looked… haunted. And Nyx knew that he wasn’t the only one who noticed.

Prompto wanted to hear all about Noct’s little solo adventure – just to hear the sound of his voice. Jack-hammering around him in the nervous, rictus steps of a spooked cactuar, he pulled his hands in and out, wanting to reach out to his friend, but afraid he might hurt him if he did.

Ignis wanted to get some food in him – every problem could be solved with an appetite (he would make a great Galahdian, in that sentiment). He muttered menu options, half to himself and half to a Noctis that wasn’t really hearing him, the lack of response to some of his favorite dishes stiffening Iggy’s spine and devolving him into more frantic, medicinal options he could prepare.

Gladio wanted him to get some rest – he wanted to hear Noctis whine about how tired he was, and therefore know that he was fine. If he had the strength to complain, he had the strength to go on. But while rest was the only option Noctis could manage to agree upon, he assented with the barest motion of his head – not a worded whine to assure them all that he was okay.

“I’ll set you up in the tent,” Nyx said, words rushing ahead to claim the role of caretaker before anyone else could – possessive, juvenile perhaps ( _“I called dibs!”_ ), but after three days, after coming back to them looking so _off_ , after feeling as sick to his stomach as a man on a slowly sinking ship might, plagued by nightmare visions of all the things that could possibly be going wrong while Nyx wasn’t there to protect him…

He knew that feeling hadn’t been exclusive, but he hoped the others wouldn’t begrudge him too much for pushing himself up to the first line of defense for Noct tonight. That look in his eyes was at the same time foreign as it was familiar to Nyx – foreign for it being on Noct’s face; on the face of a man Nyx had never expected to see the horrors of the world on if he could help it.

He’d seen a different breed of it in the stares of his brothers, sunken into the full bellies of the trucks that dragged them back to Insomnia. He’d seen the phantoms that couldn’t be exorcised in the shadows of their eyes, turned down to the dirty floors, seats stained with rust where a friend should have been sitting across from them.

While the ghosts knotting around Noct’s head weren’t quite as tangible, weren’t quite the same as the daily wraiths Nyx shared with the Kingsglaive in the backs of those trucks, Nyx recognized that distant look, those averted eyes, that stare aimed between the cracks of the people who cared about him, watching their shadows as if he were waiting for something to jump out from them and bite.

The light hurt Noct’s eyes; fingers felt like matchsticks on his cold arms; and the softest noises were like cymbals crashing about his ears.

All this Nyx could see without saying a single word to ask. He saw how his eyes turned away from the soft spill of campfire light that snuck between the tent flaps as Nyx followed him inside. He saw how wide they got when the dark folded around him again as the tent closed. He felt the contradiction between his flesh instinctively flinching away from the lightest brush of touch, and the dry, inaudible sound tickling his throat that yearned for it after so long without. He watched the way Noct’s shoulders seized at every scrape of chair legs on stone outside, every pop of wood in the fire, every rush of fabric in the tent as Nyx reordered the sleeping bags and blankets.

“Noct.”

He was careful to be quiet, like coaxing a frightened animal from a trap. And he _was_ trapped. Trapped within his own thoughts – it wouldn’t be the first time Nyx helped him from that snare – still trapped within whatever darkness had accompanied him underneath the skin of the world.

“Just need some sleep,” Noctis mumbled.

He scrambled beneath the covers like a spider from the sun, all twitchy, frantic limbs trying to escape Nyx’s scrutiny. He compacted himself into a ball beneath the threadbare blankets, less out of a want for comfort and more out of a need to hide.

“Kay,” Nyx said, swallowing tightly. “Take as much time as you need.”

He made to leave, scuttling around the scattered supplies and forgotten hobbies strewn about the tent floor in the wake of Noct’s absence, everyone being too terrified of the state he was in to focus on much else.

A selfish clot of relief grew in his throat when Noctis stopped him.

“You’re not staying?” His voice was rough and raw. While he didn’t shout, he’d barely spoken louder than a whisper since he’d come back, and the effort of volume now made his words shake, a desperate, almost hysterical current sweeping Nyx back to his side.

“Do you want me to stay?” he asked, uncertain of the withdrawn stoop of Noct’s shoulders and his hastily deterred gaze whenever Nyx turned to look at him.

“Please?”

They didn’t fit into place as quickly as Nyx was used to, Noct facing his back to him when he laid down, withholding the usual effortlessness of affection that warmed Nyx’s side like a bedside candle. He wasn’t receptive to touch or talk, receding into himself every time he heard the blankets shift beneath Nyx’s arm, halting from reaching out to him when he recognized the tension in his shoulders. Noctis even seemed to know when Nyx was opening his mouth to speak, the slightest shiver to his shoulders snapping his lips back shut again.

Nyx wasn’t used to this. It was him who Noctis came to when no one else knew how to listen. It was him who Noct came to when the weight of the world was too much even for his friends to carry, or his father, or any of the guardians that kept him safe at the Citadel. It was him who Noct came to when he felt lost from everyone else; he came to him to be grounded again, to find himself again, through touch or talk or whatever it took to help him find his way home.

Rare were the times that Noct couldn’t tell _him_ what hurt. Rarer were the times where he didn’t want to be touched, to be held fast and moored to Nyx and pull himself to the simplicity of feeling physicality, rather than the messed up web of feelings that hands couldn’t reach.

Nyx watched the outline of Noctis in the dimness, tracing the tensed silhouette of his shoulders, the chaos of his hair cascading down the back of his neck. He watched the shadows moving around him, shapeless shifts of light curling against the canvas walls, on guard for the nightmares threatening to accost his prince in the night.

The days of exhaustive worrying must have caught up to Nyx. At some point, he fell asleep. He only knew he had when he opened his eyes to the coveted feeling of warmth against his chest, a body in his space that, for the longest time, he’d been too afraid to open to anyone else. Not until Noctis came, seeking shelter that Nyx didn’t think he was capable of being since Galahd.

He shrugged sleep from his shoulders like a fur coat, discarding it like an indulgence he couldn’t afford. A decade on the battlefield had trained him not to linger on slumber for a second more than he needed to. While this wasn’t the warfront against Niflheim, there was a war brewing behind the shadows of Noct’s eyes, nevertheless. And that was just as worth fighting as any Empire.

“What’s wrong?”

“Cold.”

Noct’s voice was small, and as delicate as a child’s shivering in winter. Nyx’s arms blended around him, forsaking the pretense of delicacy now that Noctis had crawled through the cracks in his walls of his own volition. He just needed some patience. He just needed Nyx to wait for him to come back.

Nyx forced himself to move slow, working his hands in soft circles between Noct’s shoulder-blades, pushing the heel of his palm up the length of his spine, down the crook of his back, calling on the whispers of magic in his blood to heat his own flesh if it would better warm Noct.

He smelled like cold. The tips of his hair tickled Nyx’s nose, sharp with sunless damp, and metal, and earth. He smelled like a grave.

“What happened down there, Noct?”

His voice felt as hoarse as if he’d swallowed soil. His thoughts ran wild, thrashing and hot at the insides of his skull, imagining what horrors had hunted Noctis down in that pit. But Noctis wasn’t hurt. Not in the ways Nyx had expected and prepared himself for. No bumps or bruises beneath the chilled, dusty fabric of his shirt – a little scrape here maybe, the edge of a wall or something walked into leaving its mark. No cuts or scars that Nyx didn’t recognize marring his skin. Every inch he’d mapped was left just as touched with the errors of time as the last time he’d traveled the lines of his skin. It was the things inside – the things Nyx couldn’t reach with his hands – that had changed.

“I really don’t know.”

It hadn’t been a daemon that had stalked Noctis through the shadows. It hadn’t been a magic spell that cursed his mind with illusions. It hadn’t been some haunted artifact taking up residence in his armiger.

“It felt like…” Noctis tried to explain, tripping over the tremors of his own voice, like even that was too loud for him to stand. “Like it was trying to tell me something… but I don’t know what it was. I don’t know where I was… I just… don’t…”

He couldn’t explain what he’d seen, catching himself on sharp red tongues hooked in his brain, keeping the tomb’s terrible secrets.

Fine. Nyx didn’t need to know all the secrets scattered across the world. He just needed to know how to help Noctis keep them. He needed to know that he could still be his shelter, no matter how old the horror. No matter how ancient or powerful or unknowable it all was.

He had burned for him. Carried the wrath of the Lucii for him. He would carry this for him, too.

“No more solo adventures, okay?” Nyx told him, the warm ministrations of his hands languishing along his back more urgently, rhythmically, coaxing the nervous cells of his skin back to the safety of his touch. “You take us with you. No matter where you go.”

Noctis laughed – a short, harsh sound, like three days in darkness had wiped the action from his memory. But it was coming back to him – laughter, talking, touching, teasing. This was good. This was familiar territory. Nyx could help him through it.

“Thought the whole point of a monarchy was doing things alone,” Noctis croaked.

“Considering how many people I’ve worked with to make that monarchy work, that’s bullshit, Your Highness.”

He couldn’t see him smile in the dark, but Nyx could feel it. He could feel his shoulders starting to relax, his face nosing a little bit closer into Nyx’s chest, his knees curling up to knock against his thighs.

Recovery wouldn’t take a day. It never did. It might not even take a week. It would be slow, torturously slow, with everything else they had to contend with still scathing ahead of them like a sky on fire.

But Nyx was good at waiting. He waited out worse fires, the storms of both sea and soul, waited for reliefs that never came, and some that did.

He was good at waiting. And Noct was worth it.


End file.
